Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

This three-page poem depicts lies told for survival’s sake, such as adopting Mexican names, learning Spanish, and dressing like poor white women.

In the mid-19th century, an American named Sargent (identified later as Bradley Sargent, who served as a California senator) cheated Miranda’s direct ancestors out of their land at Rancho El Potrero. Years later, Sargent died from an illness he contracted shortly after falling into the Carmelo River. Isabel Meadows recalls that an Indigenous woman named Ularia had spoken to the river after Sargent drove Miranda’s ancestors off the land. Meadows believes that “Ularia gave the river the idea to curse Sargent,” so the river killed Sargent and thus “cleansed itself of his greed” (42).

This one-paragraph is excerpted from the writings of O. P. Fitzgerald, a Southern Methodist minister who spent more than two decades in California. Fitzgerald describes the “Digger Indian” as one who “holds a low place in the scale of humanity” because “one Digger is uglier than another, and an old squaw caps the climax” (43)